


monsters are always hungry, darling

by Signe (oxoniensis)



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-31
Updated: 2010-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-14 06:30:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxoniensis/pseuds/Signe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They always did have the biggest conversations in a code that only they could break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	monsters are always hungry, darling

**Author's Note:**

> Written for lunatics_word, who gave me the prompt: [Snow and Dirty Rain](http://subwayphilosophy.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/its-not-because-our-hearts-are-large-theyre-not/) by Richard Siken for day six of my 2010 Advent Calendar. Beta thanks to pjvilar. Originally posted [here](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/461395.html). Title and section headers are from Snow and Dirty Rain.

_i. The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I'm alive_

Brad is always angry when he returns from an assignment. It's not discernable in his greeting or in anything he says, but there's a mocking calm to him that tells Nate all he needs to know.

This time, Brad lost a member of his team. The moment Nate hears about it (forty-eight hours after the event) he flashes back to Muwaffaqiyah. How close that clusterfuck came to disaster. The nightmares he had in his snatched sleep afterwards, his mind tricking him with all the ways it could have been worse.

Nate knows Brad blames himself, even though no one else would, least of all Corporal Barnes. Nate remembers the leadership that made men feel expendable, stepping stones to a medal or a promotion.

Nate understands.

And that's why he doesn't try to talk about it.

He simply waits until it's dark, then wrestles Brad to their bed. Forces him to fight, and when he does, rewards him with kisses. Until they can't fight any more because Brad's sobbing and Nate's holding him tight.

They're both alive.

 

 _ii. I'm thinking, my plant, his chair, the ashtray that we bought together._

Brad always comes home to Nate.

Nate remembers the first time Brad called it home. It wasn't the house they'd bought together then, but Nate's apartment, the one with the leaky faucet in the bathroom and three flights of stairs painted the ugly green of woodland camouflage and Brad's clothes still in a backpack at the bottom of the wardrobe. Brad had been drinking too much, in a dive on Tenth Street, and he'd said to Nate, "Take me home." He'd meant _keep me by your side_ , and when Nate said, "yes," he'd meant _forever_.

They always did have the biggest conversations in a code that only they could break.

 

 _iii. Lie under the covers, pretending to sleep, while I'm in the other room._

Nate cheats sometimes. Crawls on top of Brad in the dim early hours and falls back asleep like that, limpet-like. It's the only way to keep Brad in the bed in the morning until Nate wakes up.

Brad's cottoned on, Nate's sure. But he doesn't try to pry Nate loose and roll out of bed those mornings. He waits for Nate, says, "hey," softly when Nate first opens his eyes. Watches him in turn. They've weathered battles together, and in that tangerine early light it's all clear, laid out in the blue depths of Brad's eyes. Something between them that is more than just the obvious: two men in love.

 

 _vi. We are all going forward. None of us are going back._

Nate has made so many fucking mistakes in his life that he can't begin to count them. He doesn't bother trying — each one, once it's made, is in the past. He can't change the past. He can't change the years he spent apart from Brad, or all the decisions he made that kept them apart. They don't matter because he's made them all right now; one bold move fixed half a decade of pusillanimous choices.

Brad never questions a single one of those earlier choices. Just the last one, the one that brought them together, as though he thinks that might be the only one Nate would possibly regret. Sometimes, Brad is an idiot. Nate tells him so each time. One day, Brad will ask that question for the last time.

 

 _v. I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want._

There's a permanent ache in his chest when Brad's away. The bed is cold at night and colder in the morning, the house too quiet. Nate mocks himself when he throws away half a meal because it doesn't taste as good without Brad.

He dreams that they grow old together, two white-haired men sitting side-by-side on a weather-beaten porch. Arguing over politics, and the new season line-up for the Boston Red Sox, and the best topping for pizza, and whether Brad's dodgy knee is any use as a weather predictor. Remembering some place else when a little girl in a dress the color of the sky wanders by. Going silent together.

He doesn't dream when Brad's home. Or doesn't remember them. Doesn't need to.

 

 _iv. Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you?_

Nate cannot describe the height and width and depth of his love for Brad. The eternity of it. The way it fills him up, a raw, visceral thing that's so much a part of him that nothing could cut it out.

"Love is about compromise, Nathaniel," his mother tells him. "Making do."

It never feels like that to Nate. He isn't making do.

 

 _vii. Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one._

A fishing trip, high up in the Black Hills. There's a dark lake, and it takes the sun hours to burn away the fog. When it does the lake goes from an inky-black to a perfect deep blue.

It's too cold to swim, although Nate knows that if either of them said that aloud the other would be forced to prove him wrong.

The ground is a familiar hard, and they don't soften it with snivel gear. Just a tarp in case it rains in the night. Night noises — the lap of water against the shore and nocturnal animals and the rustling of ponderosa pines — send Nate to sleep faster than their three thousand dollar Stearns & Foster mattress and double-glazed windows.

He wakes when there's no more than a hint of glacier-gray over the treetops. Brad's hands are inside Nate's pants, his palm spit-wet and cool, and Nate sighs into the touch, dick swelling as he slowly wakes. He presses back against Brad, the bulge of Brad's hard dick fitting against the hollow of Nate's back, the damp warmth of Brad's breath on his neck.

Silent, even though there's no one to hear.

Later they'll strip naked and Nate will kiss every inch of Brad's body, the baby-soft skin in the pink crease of his thighs, the line of coarse blond hair on his belly, the bony protuberance of his elbows. He'll kiss him like he's famished, and then he'll slide, slow, slow, onto Brad's dick and when he comes he'll shout and curse so loud he'll send a flight of black crows up into the air.

They're both alive.


End file.
